


A Clock I Forgot to Wind

by toweringpines



Category: Naruto
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Character Death, Heavy Angst, I'm Sorry, I'm so sorry, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-05-26 17:57:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6249799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toweringpines/pseuds/toweringpines
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It feels like tearing Naruto’s heart in two a second time. His fingers shake and he stares at them expecting to see blood and fragments of broken ribcage under his fingernails.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Clock I Forgot to Wind

**Author's Note:**

> An old one that I wrote when I was really tired, so sorry if it's not up to par, but I edited as much as I could. I'm so sorry for this one.
> 
> I really wouldn't read this if you're suicidal, have suicidal thoughts or are depressed. Triggers everywhere.

When Sasuke closes his eyes, he sees Naruto imprinted on his sharingan.

Times when he’d covertly activated it just so he could have Naruto’s smiling face frozen in his memory.

And there he is, in his memory, smiling all the way up to his big, blue eyes and branching crow’s feet. He’s so alive Sasuke wants to wrap himself in it.

That day his golden hair was soft to touch and his usual rough laughter was brighter than ever, like the sun that was making his skin glow.

It was one of the good days between them. When Naruto looked at him with all the love in the world, and Sasuke looked back, blush firmly in place.

The man beside him now, is faded. A small sliver of himself. He’s wearing the skin, but his insides are so different Sasuke doesn’t see the Naruto of the past when he looks at him.

The worst part is, he knows this Naruto better than the old, happy one.

He knows him inside out and outside in to the point where it’s impossible to un-know him.

He knows when the stubborn, determined light in Naruto’s eyes started fading. When his smiles were less frequent and more bittersweet. He knows when Naruto stopped sleeping and their bed felt cold when he left to train. He knows when the paranoia got so bad that their apartment started looking more like a fortress, keeping them firmly inside and everyone firmly out, just like a cage. He knows when the bathroom became Naruto’s private space with a sound-proof seal on the door so that Sasuke couldn’t hear his screams and sobs. He knows when he broke it down that he found Naruto in pieces with deep gashes from his own nails healing as quickly and as painfully as they were made. Sasuke knows that Naruto looked so hollow when he found out. So scared.

He knows that Naruto was ashamed. He knows and he understands.

So he looks back on the memories imprinted on his sharingan and smiles wistfully because he knows this new Naruto inside out and outside in but he doesn’t love him.

This Naruto is staring at the same passage in one of his ninjutsu scrolls without seeing it at all, and he looks dead. Like Sasuke was from the moment his family was butchered by his own brother, and to the moment Naruto saved him in the place he first ripped Naruto’s heart in two with his own hand and singing chidori.

This Naruto doesn’t love him either. There’s a longing for what they had, before Naruto started dying bit by bit, but there’s nothing of what there used to be.

None of the chaste kisses and moments where Naruto was so beautiful that Sasuke’s heart hurt to look at him. It’s gone.

This Naruto looks at him and doesn’t see him. Accepts his presence when he’s hyperventilating on the floor, but doesn’t want it. This Naruto stays late at the Hokage’s office to avoid having to go out and smile at citizens and shinobi. This Naruto is no longer Naruto. He looks more like Sasuke was only a few years ago. Sasuke knows him down to the very marrow of his bones. He knows him, but he can’t love him.

When he tells Naruto this, Naruto doesn’t look up. Silent tears splash onto the scroll he’s looking at, but not reading, and Sasuke knows this is the last straw; that if he leaves, there is nothing to keep Naruto tethered any longer.

But he leaves anyway. Hears the strangled wail that leaves Naruto’s throat as he closes the door, and hears the one that rips itself out of him when he sinks to the floor in Sakura’s apartment.

It feels like tearing Naruto’s heart in two a second time. His fingers shake and he stares at them expecting to see blood and fragments of broken ribcage under his fingernails.

Sakura takes one look at him and leaves to find Naruto.

She comes back an hour later with a voice so hoarse from crying that she can barely speak, and a look on her face that Sasuke only saw once when Tsunade died.

They cling to each other, sobbing and wailing, tearing at hair.

No more team 7. Just Sasuke and Sakura and a Kakashi who’s old and senile. Yamato and Sai died on an ANBU mission sometime ago.

Kakashi can barely be considered a member of team 7 anymore either. He’s wasting away in memories of his old and dead genin team.

Sometimes he looks at Sakura and whispers Rin then starts to scream and cry.

Sometimes he looks at Naruto and beckons him close. The first time it happened Kakashi kissed Naruto and crooned “Obito,”

The second time he succeeded it was “Minato-sensei,” over and over again.

Sometimes he looks at Sasuke and frowns like he’s seeing something that shouldn’t be there. Sasuke’s always run parallel to Kakashi.

It’s painful.

It feels like they’re all dying. Like a star has finally collapsed into a blackhole and its gravity is pulling everything else in with it.

 

. . .

 

They don’t find the body, but when it’s announced that the Hokage has died, it feels final. It feels like being ripped apart from the inside. Like he’s struck himself with his own chidori.

He thinks that maybe he has.

It feels like the end.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry. I love em but I'm a cruel author.


End file.
